Chronicles of the Crimson Poppy
by A Clockwork Pumelo
Summary: A collection of fiction about my OC, Aka Keshi, Koorikage of the Village Hidden in the Frost. Yes, I'm aware that nobody cares about OC's. However, this is well-written and interesting, also being revamped. Rated M for... let's see just about everything.
1. Book Two: Broken Poppy

Chronicles of the Crimson Poppy

Book 2: Blind Poppy

By A Clockwork Pumelo

I do not own any of the characters from the Naruto manga who make brief appearances here. Massashi Kishimoto does. This is a fan-based story about an original character. Please support the official release.

Taping my pen between my fingers and grabbing up the porcelain mask with my other hand, I lean back into the leather and cushion abyss of my office chair. Today, I will write still more about my life before becoming Koorikage, Shadow of the Village Hidden in the Snow. Initiating the recall technique, I close my eyes and feel the floodgates of my subconscious open as my hand begins to write what my mind normally cannot articulate.

_Memories…_

My twelfth birthday is today. I study the porcelain mask in my hands, which are sheathed from knuckles to wrists in black leather and crimson blood. This mask is not an animal, as is the tradition of the Black Ops, but an abstract, jagged design. The porcelain holds a strange luminosity before me in the first rays of the sun as I wipe a solitary fleck of red from the rim of an eye hole. I rise from my fighter's crouch and lift the mask to my face, making a hand sign to dispel the illusion my initiation had taken place in. Spatters of blood on my clothes fade and vanish, and the jungle around me melts back into a barren hilltop. The bodies strewn across the ground do not disappear, and I gag a bit as the smell of fresh blood sours back to the stench of decaying flesh.

"Congratulations, Keshi-san, you are now a Black Ops Captain. You will be assigned your first A-rank mission tomorrow." My sensei's hand rests heavily on my shoulder as the air displaced from his sudden appearance blows strands of sweat-soaked hair out of my face.

"Hai, Sir." I nod curtly, turn and walk away. I am too exhausted to body-flicker, and I try to hide my limp until I am out of sight. My leg will only take a few hours to heal, but as the crows always told me, any weakness is bound to invite exploitation.

_ The world fades in and out of focus, hurtling through a few years and dozens of murders. Time lurches, slows, and I am once again in the moment…_

My best friend's heart slows and stops under my fingers as his eyes glaze over and his life-blood pools at our feet. Far away I hear his young wife open the door and draw breath to scream. Whirling, my blade soars across the space between us and finds its mark in her throat, pinning her to the door, dead. It is my _job_ to kill these friends. Somewhere far away in my body a solitary pang of guilt winds its way into my chest. I push it away. People like me are not allowed to feel such emotions. That is what being in the Black Ops is all about. I retrieve my blade from the woman's throat, neatly avoiding the body as it crumples to the floor. I fling the used knife aside in disgust and it sinks deep into the spreading red stain on the tatami mats as I turn on the spot and melt into darkness.

A mile away in the woods, I appear in a swirl of displaced air on a high branch and take out my mission booklet. I flip to the page with their faces, fumbling for a pen. The nib hovers over the paper poised to strike them from my life forever, and comes down in a thick swath of crimson ink, a spatter of fresh blood crossing out the existence of an innocent life. Another red x follows, obliterating the man's spouse as surely as the knife I threw not five minutes ago. What a pity. She was the one who taught me to throw like that. I remove my stuffy mask, letting the chill breeze wash over me as I whisper into the darkness.

"Why did you wait? I told you to run for the border... you _idiot_." It is not my fault that he stayed, ignored me, and died at my hand. _Guilt is for those who don't want to survive_, the cackle of my crow-mother's voice grates in my mind. _Guilt is for the weak_, the voice of my sensei replies. I stand stock still for a second before I regain detachment and tuck the booklet back into my weapons pouch. Wiping the moisture on my forehead off on my sleeve, I replace my mask and flicker back to headquarters to debrief.

_ Darkness closes in around me as I continue to write, knowing what is next to come when time slows yet again. I watch myself now as a ghost, invisible witness to my own naïveté…_

"The target has been eliminated... Sir." She says to the rough stone floor, a fifteen-year-old killer kneeling in the Black Ops Captain's office, reporting last night's events like they were some sort of story told for the sadistic pleasure of the tall, hawk-masked man before her. The silence from her commander makes her look up into the porcelain eyeholes, waiting for a response. After a few seconds of fidgeting, she breaks the silence.

"What's my bonus?" From this angle, I can see the tension between the two people in the room, the way my left hand moves as I pick at a hangnail. It _was_ wrong, asking for the money, but at the time I deserved it for the job, dead best friend or no, and it wasn't like being an officer paid well. Passing through the oaken desk and his tattooed shoulder, I see for the first time why his hands were behind him. Ram, snake, tiger; the hand signs for a clone. A small bell next to the office door rings, and my younger self turns to look as I see the mask of the real commander dip beneath the table and the clone materializes in his place.

_The gravity of the situation, the fact that this was the turning point that sent me spinning to where I am now hits me as, far away, my hand cramps. But I keep writing._

"You don't get a bonus." was his reply, muffled from behind the protuberant beak of his mask. In retrospect, it is a thing of beauty, the curved beak savagely reminiscent of a real bird of prey, as it gleams in the torchlight. A suitable guise for such a predator as this man. I had been his chick for nearly a decade since he snatched me, first from the fate of my fugitive parents and then from the loving nest of the crows in my mob-family. I watch myself tune out into memory land, hearing the words and seeing the signals that I _really_ should have paid attention to the first time. Ram, boar, ox, dog…

"You failed to follow instructions, both in letter _and_ in spirit. Keshi? You're not even listening, damnit. Pay attention!" My past self looked up as the clone threw a shuriken that missed her left shoulder by a centimeter, surprised but not nearly as wary as she should have been. I should have known something was horribly amiss, noticed the lack of a breeze as the shuriken sailed by, and how it made no sound as it struck the door behind me. But all I had been thinking of at the time was money.

"I did my mission, the guy's dead. Where's my paycheck?" she said flatly, rummaging in her pocket and tossing the mission booklet onto the polished surface of the desk. Beneath the desk, I see the real Commander's hands flash together in the last hand sign of the replacement technique: Snake. The clone at his desk vanished in a cloud of water vapor, and the real Commander lifted her body up and onto his desk, pinning her beneath him as he snarled at her.

"It's not about the mission, damnit. It's about you doing exactly what you're told." I circle around, closing in on the pair and passing right through a few strands of her hair that wavered away from her head as he yelled at her. I can see his amber eyes through the slits of his mask and the way the pupils flare open, then shrink to tiny dots. Hawk eyes, all the better to bring his prey into sharp focus as his voice drops to a deadly low pitch.

"Your file said you were a virgin... That's why I gave you this mission, Keshi. It was a lesson, one that you _don't_ seem to want to _learn on your own_." The amber eyes widened as his body pressed closer to her, silently asking permission and not getting it.

"But why? Let me go!" She struggles hopelessly against a body twice her size and fails, insolence giving way to panic. I want to wrench him away from her, to save myself from what I know he is going to do, what he _did_ to me. I want to reach out and vaporize him, pour out the hate I feel into his veins and poison him, but I can do nothing. Because this is the past. Because I do not exist as I am yet.

"Because innocence… _is weakness_." His laugh turned bitter as he spat the last words. The mad grin spreads under the hawk mask, and I continue to write.

_Time blips in and out now, only a confused, painful night passing by…_

"You know you wanted it. You have to get used to it." He withdrew, watching my eyes flick toward the door, and chuckled maniacally and daring my younger self to try something stupid. Only he knew how many locks were on that door. I had counted six at the time, but that meant nothing. Upon a closer, more ghostly inspection, I found at least ten. I should have done something, _anything_ to get away last night. But he was the hawk, and I was his prey. My stomach churns as his hand lands hard on her cheek and he shoves her back down onto the dirty tatami mats, crouching over her and lifting her chin with a blood-spattered hand.

"Fuck you, bastard." She snarls at him, droplets of fresh blood flying from between broken teeth.

"Oh, but I was so _gentle_..." _Liar_, she glares at him through yesterday's black eye that is almost healed. I don't want to be around for this part; I still have nightmares about these encounters.

_I will myself to wake up, to skip over these memories as time races and crawls, and I am back in my younger body, reliving everything…_

The feeling of a rough hand ripping strands of hair out of my scalp as I clamp my jaws down on the knotted part of my headband that has been shoved into my mouth.

Pain, as the rough stone floor scrapes hard against my naked back and iron fingers wrap around my neck, tight enough to kill. I wish I had died then. Unfortunately, I am very, very hard to kill.

Starbursts of white-hot agony in front of my eyes as a sickening pop in my shoulders heralds the descent of a foot upon my back, ripping my arms from their sockets. I can hear my own screams ripping my vocal chords, and the pathetic flopping sound my body makes as I fall to the floor.

The feel of my upper body sliding in short, jarring strokes along the floor, slicked in my own blood as I watch my ankles loll in and out of my quickly dwindling vision.

Serrated waves of pain welling up through my abdomen, and the unforgettable, visceral violation of a knife stabbing and cutting where a knife has absolutely _no_ right to be.

_Somewhere, somewhen far away, I finish a sheet of paper and start on another…_

If I ever tell anyone about this, they will probably ask me why I did not tell anyone, why I did not get help. The short answer is that I could not. Death, injury, and abuse are part of life for a Shinobi. And even if someone had cared, what could I do? The bruises, cuts, and broken bones never lasted for more than a few hours, curse my natural healing. I had no casts, no bandages or splints to betray me to the world. I had no evidence to prove a moot point.

"Get dressed. And put the mask back on too, I don't want to see you. You have another solo mission tomorrow. Some rogue officer." I got up, pulled on my tattered pants and scurried out of the room to clean up at my apartment. I made my decision that night, the choice to run for it and never look back.

_Again, I follow myself through my own memories, this time to a small cottage on the edge of the Land of Waves… _

"But why would you do such a thing? You know that this makes you a criminal." the middle-aged woman said. The moonlight deepened the wrinkles around my would-be victim's eyes as she peered through her cataracts, a sign of the premature aging common among those of our profession.

"Just get the hell out of the country." I said. I locked gazes with her cloudy old eyes, telling her everything and nothing of what I had been through. I think she understood, perhaps all too well because she gave me a small box with a few sweets left in it, patted my gloved hand, and told me she had been a black operative too when she was young. I ate a few of the candies and thought about what she had said as she changed into her old gear, complete with a chipped porcelain rabbit mask.

I escorted her to the border before the retrieval squad caught up with us, losing everything I had except a few knives, my mask, and some food pills in the ensuing flight. I float high above myself as time melts and stretches, making weeks seem like minutes. I wandered, making ghostly trails across land I did not know. All I knew or cared about was that I was not in Wave country. An enemy from the Sand country could have found and killed me, and I would have been glad. I thought I would wander until I died, and be eaten by the wolves.

_Madness and the burning heat of the desert engulf me as I fall down, into my weak, dehydrated, starved body…_

It is not a wild animal who finds me when I collapse under a scrubby overhang jutting out from the scorching ground. Cool water splashes through the eye holes of my mask, and a pair of strikingly sea-green eyes swim into focus, framed by white hair. He motions to his partner, a girl with bristling ginger hair and fierce hazel eyes reminiscent of a large cat, to come forward. They debate, oblivious to my listening, whether they should take me back to their master. I clear my throat and they look at me.

"I don't care who your leader is. Take me to him, and I'll be your ally. I swear it on my life." It seems a suitable proposition. They stare at me for a few seconds, look at each other, and nod.

"Can you walk? Or do we have to _carry_ your sorry ass?" The ginger snorts, picking up one of my arms by the mangled, dirty sleeve. She releases it to flop limply back into the dust, betraying me. In a dizzying blur, I find myself draped like an ermine collar over the white haired guy's shoulders, supported by a semicircular shelf of white, hard bone. As my head rolls back onto his chest, I smell sandalwood and camellias, and feel the rumble of his voice.

"Like my bones? They're quite unique, a kekkei genkai in fact... My master thinks they will be very useful when I become his vessel, whatever that means..." After that, his chatter stretches and blurs as he talks to the redhead, and their conversation mingles sometimes with the sweet, high notes of a flute. After a few meals, I recover enough to talk to them. They will not tell me their names, so I refer to them as White-Hair and Redhead. Where they are taking me I do not know; only time will tell.

_The memory release technique is wearing off, and I fall through the blackness behind my eyes and back into the present…_

Watery sunlight is streaming in through the window, making vertical stripes out of the scars that cross over my eyelids. I open my eyes, one black, one white, and with my left hand I stroke the surface of the mask held to my chest, porcelain still cool under my fingertips. In some places it is smooth and unmarred, in others the scratches and nicks of battle catch at my calluses. I hold it up to the light, marveling in the translucent delicacy of the thing before setting it on the desk. Now I remove the tape that holds the pen between my fingers. The paper before me is filled with cramped handwriting and sloppy doodles. Reading the page, I decide to put it on top of the pile marked "memoirs", and move on to the other, much larger and more boring piles of papers that wait for my attention.


	2. The Byakugan Eye

The Koorikage of the Village Hidden in the Frost

By A Clockwork Pumelo

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't own any of the characters from Naruto, not that any of them show up in this... but the concept is based off what belongs to Massahi Kishimoto, so I'll just be safe.

_...And this is why I love this place... my own village, finally after all these years..._

The soft scrunch of snow was the only sound that announced her descent, down the kilometers of snaking, narrow stone steps that hugged the steep rock face of the Shimogakure cliffs, _her cliffs_. She knew she could have taken the new lift for an easy, two-minute descent into the lush, green valleys of medicinal herbs below, but that thing gave her vertigo. She was loathe to use it, unless she needed to get down to the herbal fields and back urgently, like when she had been dealing with the wounded during the founding of her village, during the massacre... only those few short weeks ago...

The ground seemed to lurch under her feet, as she sank back against the comfortingly solid cliff, heather and sage already beginning to sprout anew in every crevice that could capture soil. The alpine plants seemed to welcome her, cushioning her back against the cold of the rock, their concern almost palpable as frost-tipped leaves rustled against the smooth, heavy robe the young Kage wore. Her feet, bare and smooth, yet tougher than the soles of any boots, peeked out over the edge of the landing as her mind struggled not to think, not to relive the horrors she had seen...

* * *

_Eight of them, the blood already caked and frozen on their faces... faces so badly mangled, nearly unidentifiable, except for the eyes. Eyes, unseeing, frozen and dead, but still able, even in death to bear witness for their departed owners. Her eldest nephew, lips split from his very face, the shattered teeth and bones as pearly white as his eyes, accented with dull red. Her former teammates, back from the days when they were mist village genin. Both had loved one another so much, always shared everything with each other, always risked their lives for each other in missions, always helped her with her healing when her sensei was busy. How ironic, that in death they were still bound together, not so much by the cords, buried inches into their throats, tangled together, but by the ice that cemented their arms around each other, that closed their lips together still, in the last kiss they would ever share, never enjoy. Even the frozen blood now melted, dripped off their cheeks, mocking the many tears they would never have a chance to shed..._

_

* * *

  
_

Bitterly, the young Kage clutched at the stiff brim of her hat, leaving dents where shaking fingers tried to release some of the pain that coursed through her like poison. A single tear rolled from each eye and tumbled down the thin, white lines of scar tissue that bore witness to the death of the person who had been most precious to her. More tears raced to follow the first two, like lost souls seeking oblivion. Each tear froze, slowly as it hit the ground, counting, remembering, mourning for each and every one of her brave shinobi who had given their lives to further her dream.

* * *

_...His fingers were white, cold as the snow he'd been dumped in, unconscious, only to be found so much later. There were two stab wounds, one on his shoulder, one through his side, both still frozen shut. His ears, nose, eyelids, even lips glistened with a dead, frozen whiteness. He was coming around now, groaning, trying to move, still laying in the inch or so of rust colored water that had melted off his body since they brought him in... his frozen lips stretched, cracked, trying to smile, and he opened his eyes. It was Yukime Hyuuga, my half brother, his pearly white byakugan eyes piercing into my heart, my mind, seeing what he already knew. He had no chance of recovery, even with my healing skills. Even so, I leaned over him, gently moving the blood-matted locks of black hair out of his eyes. His eyes were all I wanted to see right now, they were almost all that was left of my dear half brother, glowing with life in the frozen, dead face. I took a breath, and placing my hands on his already warming temples, forced the last of my fading green chakra into his battered body. A small bead of sweat rolled off my brow, stinging in the many small cuts I had yet to even heal. All my chakra had gone into the battered shinobi that lay quietly around us. I felt his forehead, noting that he was already too warm..._

_

* * *

  
_

Her back crushed against the heather as the leader of Hidden Frost gave herself over to the memories, if only for a little while. It never paid to hold anything in for too long, especially trauma.

* * *

_Yukime, eyes half lidded, glittering with the madness that fever brought. Yukime, eyes wide and madly rolling, body seizing, his spine a taught bow arching off the sweat soaked bed as she clutched his forearms, practically laying across the man as she forced the last of her chakra up through the frostbitten wrists her fingernails dug into. Up the arms, to his tortured, overheated brain in one last effort to keep the madness, the fire, from consuming all of him that was left. Yukime, eyes closed, only his lips moving, telling her what to do, how far the damage had really spread. Yukime, pearl drop eyes clear and calm as he told her that what she had done was just a temporary measure, that he would still die no matter how many food pills she took to boost her dangerously depleted and unstable chakra. Yukime, eyes kind, placing no blame upon her for what she could not do, could not even see.  
_

* * *

The young Kage stilled, breath caught in small, slow sobs as she traced thin inscisions on her eyelids. The still tender skin twitched ever so slightly above the opalescent irises that had once belonged to her dear half brother, wet with tears.

* * *

_Yukime, eyes gentle, telling her how much he cared for her, his little half sister. Whispering now, about how sorry he was that she didn't have his byakugan, or else she might have seen the damage the cold had done, and been able to move on to help those precious people she could have done something for, besides wait for death._

* * *

The eyes blinked, opened a sliver wider, but still saw nothing, save for the memories etched indelibly into her mind.

* * *

_Yukime, eyes sincere as he told her that he wanted her to have his eyes, that he knew from her lineage, that her body could accept and use his byakugan, as well, if not better than his own._

* * *

The eyes closed again, scrunching up the white scar tissue and etching lines of sorrow upon the young, smooth face.

* * *

_Yukime, eyes pleading, chest rising and falling rapidly with the effort to prolong his fading life. Yukime, eyes staring hungry and sad at his half sister, the last thing he would ever see, the last precious person he would ever know. I could almost feel his last thoughts. 'She's an angel, sent from above to save me from myself... always has been, always will be. Even when we were in ANBU, she never killed if she could help it. But now that I'm gone, she'll have to be someone else's angel... the only thing I can do now is to give her the gift to be able to see those she will bring to salvation...' Yukime, eyes closing for the last time as the needle slid into a pale vein in his arm, as I kissed his burning forehead, and slid another, smaller needle into my own arm, knowing I would have less than a minute to get what needed to be done done, and myself onto the operating table beside him and say good bye..._

* * *

Long, delicate fingers brushed traces of moisture from long lashes...

* * *

_Yukime, blurred and distorted through his own eyes, a look of utter peace on his broken, lifeless visage. His eyes observed their previous owner, sending information to a new mind, adjusting to a new set of neurons and impulses. My fingers brushed sleepily over freshly healed incisions, as my own chakra, restored by the anesthetic slumber, coated the new organs, reshaping and settling them to be mine. No, not mine, ours. We had sacrificed ourselves for the village, we had done our best to hold onto our dreams...._

* * *

The pure white Kage hat again took it's place upon the head, now tilted up instead of down, as the small frame rose slowly from the steps, adjusting the heavy robe and brushing off flecks of dirt and heather. "_Our_ dreams..." the light, almost androgynous voice proclaimed. Bare feet resumed their trek down the steps, sure and purposeful. She would never, if she could possibly help it, let another person die like that. Her ragtag village full of medical ninja, some her former teachers, some her students, would never turn away anyone who came peacefully for aid. Never. Her lands, the snow capped peaks, the glaciers, the alpine valleys teeming with green life, the beautiful rocky cliffs, would always be known from now on as a haven for anyone, ninja or commoner, who needed help. She had founded this village on the belief that one's life was the most precious thing one could have, and there was no way that anybody was going to tear that away from her. She was Koorikage, and this was her village, and she was going to protect every bit of it.


	3. The Sharingan Eye

**The Sharingan Eye**

**By A Clockwork Pumelo**

**I do not own any Naruto characters. They belong to Massahi Kishimoto, although I doubt any actual characters appear in this little story. This one is about how Keshi got her Sharingan. I'm trying to go in chronological order, but since most of these are flashbacks, it's a bit difficult.  
**

_Finally,_ THWACK, the kunai sank into the target in front of the raven haired teenager.

_Some time to train alone,_ THUNK THUNK, the second pair embedded themselves in their target above the figure.

_And have some peace and quiet, _WHACK WHACK WHACK, three more kunai buried themselves precisely in the circles painted on three more trees, this time in a row in front of her.

_So I can forget about all that paperwork! _CHUNK, the last kunai pierced the target in her blind spot, drawing a satisfied smile from her. This was her third perfect spread in a row. Looking up at the blazes of crimson adorning the sky above her, she began to retrieve her kunai.

_Better get back to her village before dark, before one of her cousins' phoenixes started another brush fire looking for her. That had been quite the fiasco,_ the kage thought, the sunset turning her snow white eyes to blushing peach and fire orbs, knowing she was never going to get home in time on foot. Ahh, but she could get home quickly, if a bit noisliy, if she were to...

BOOMBOOMBOOM, leaves quivered as the shock waves of her jutsu spread from the point of her Flickering technique. The Oscillatory Flicker was very fast, but damn, so loud. _An imperfect jutsu, only suitable for traveling long distances, and only when you don't care about being heard... _she thought, crossing the snow line and starting to leave huge piles of fine ice crystals, as well as the telltale sonic booms that traced her path up the mountain. Unbeknown to her, her noise had attracted something, and that something just happened to be trouble incarnate...

_Where is she?!? _The impatient Uchiha fumed, pacing back and forth the edge of the tall cliff, fidgeting. _She's always this late, don't worry about it,she'll pop her head over the ridge any time now, any time..._ A series of staccato booms reached his ears, echoing and making the boy sigh in relief. That was her alright. Nobody could travel as noisily as his favorite cousin. _Nobody._ Grinning, and hoping to get in a bit of evening training with her, he bit his left thumb and summoned a giant, flaming bird. He hopped onto it's back, and the phoenix dropped smoothly off the cliff, pulling up only centimeters from the snow and melting a huge trench into it. The boy and his bird seemed as one, looping and rolling through the sky, following the shockwaves as he raced to find his cousin.

His cousin, however, had come across her own problems, as she fought to evade the thing that had begun to attack her as she made her way through the herb fields on foot, not wanting to damage the plants by Flickering through them. It, the creature, seemed to be some sort of reptile, at least ten feet long with short, powerful legs, long tail, and blackish pebbled skin. The part that worried her was the mouth. Not the teeth, although there were plenty of those, but the fact that the creature seemed so intent on biting her, and nothing else. As it's teeth fastened into the hem of her long coat, she looked skywards for just an instant, distracted by the cry of what could only be her brother's phoenix. Just then, the giant lizard released her coat, whipping about to sink it's teeth into her chakra infused fingers, biting hard and then relinquishing her digits, leaving trails of blood to drip to the ground. Hissing at the unusually painful bite, Keshi used the injured hand to pin the lizard's head to the ground. Gathering her chakra to her other hand, she drew out a kunai, locating the spinal cord of the beast with her Byakugan, and brought down the weapon squarely into the cold, reptilian flesh. Hearing a small chuckle from the bushes, she used her Byakugan to locate the source and flung three kunai behind her, hearing the soft thumps they made as they all hit their targets: left eye, right eye, throat. She could see the chakra trails in her vision fade out. She didn't hear the small poof though.

Then, the heat wave caught her, forcing her into a crouch to keep her rattled balance. _Funny, I shouldn't even be dizzy, not just from the adrenaline... _she thought, as the fiery bird's passenger vaulted off the giant feathered back. "WOW, look at that thing! What IS it?!?! The raven haired boy bounded over to the seemingly limp and harmless monster, poking it's crimson-smeared head and watching in fascination as the thing's jaws parted slightly, revealing rows of sharp, bloody teeth. He poked it again, and some more of the foul stuff oozed from the thing's gums to drip onto his kunai. "D-DON'T TOUCH IT!" the now thoroughly dizzy kage managed to bark, as she sensed the dull thump of the creature's heart, muted until now, speed up slightly. _I thought, I thought... but how? I severed it's entire spinal cord... how is the thing still alive after that? Oh, no, he's not...!_ The kage had tried to warn him, but as the jaws closed around the monster's last victim, all she could do was stumble towards the boy and the beast, kunai raised and swaying. "AAHHH!... ouch! Get it off me!" The Uchiha exclaimed, caught in the rapidly stiffening jaws of the (now) dead lizard, his hand burning with the fire of a thousand types of toxins, all contained in the saliva of the deadly beast clamped to him in a death grip. His cousin swam into view, slashing and hacking the creature's head to bits, nicking and scraping his hand in her panic.

How they made it home, nobody knew, but the scorched tree tops and trail of small blood spots leading to the lift told some part of the tale. Knowing she was going to pass out soon, as her body started to shut down for healing, she thought_ Damn, that thing must have a powerful poison, to hurt my body badly enough to cause a healing stupor... I wonder if cousin's going to be alright... of course he is... he has healers trained by me to look after him..._ she placed her palm on the doors to the main hospital, and sent a pulse of chakra into the seal, allowing the doors to swing open. After informing her staff of the encounter with the lizard, she checked on her cousin, cleaned her own wound, and flopped down onto her bed, rolling onto her back just before losing consciousness.

Within the heavy trance of her innate healing response, the kage delved deep into her body and analyzed exactly what in the bite had caused it's effects. She didn't like what she found. The saliva of that thing had been crawling with bacteria of all kinds, too many to count, as well as a cocktail of other toxic substances. This was bad. Very bad. She had to wake up. She had to get to her cousin before the toxins poisoned his blood. But her body was not something she could force to do something impossible. At least, not much... Pearly eyes opened, focusing slowly, narrowing her vision to include only the clock by her bedside, and the glass of water next to it._ Eight... hours... oh... gods... no..._ she groaned, knowing that she was, more than likely, already too late. Discarding the dirty, blood stained clothes from earlier, the kage threw on her medic uniform and made a quick, one handed seal, Flickering herself into the hall outside the ICU ward, and froze at the sound of loud, panicked orders, and, in the background, retching.

"Where IS she? Doesn't she know this is a serious case?!?!? SHUT UP you two... she's in a healing coma, didn't you hear that she was bitten too? You! Go get some more of the antidote in vial C-314, and be snappy about it, Don't look at me that way! I know damn well that that's a normally unsafe dosage, but better side effects than death! You! Go get someone else, you're all worn out... Yes, we've used that one before, we've used every single one of our damn antidotes already, so if you have any suggestions, speak up, damnit!

The raven head tilted at the sounds, before the kage entered, a mask of calm on her face, despite the fact that her heart was pounding, and her eyes stung at the sight of her cousin, intravenous tubes forming a filigree of multicolored lifelines around his tortured, rapidly dying body. Seeing his cousin, the boy tried to sit up, but all he could do was stir feebly under the sweat soaked sheets. "Step aside, you've done your bit," was all she said, but it sent them scurrying. Nobody wanted to be around when she performed her most difficult healings... or at least in range.

She pulled up a chair next to her cousin's bed, keeping tight control on her heart and breathing rates. She mustn't let show that she knew what would come to pass. Taking gentle hold of his good hand, and the other wrist, careful not to disturb the crowded halo of intravenous tubes dripping stuff into him, she exhaled, gathering her chakra. Opening her now activated Byakugan eyes, she couldn't suppress a small intake of breath, as she saw the havoc wreaked within the boy's body by both toxin and antidote alike, and something more... the bacteria. That was the real threat, and exactly what the medics had missed. She could see, feel, as the tiny creatures circulated through his veins, slowly poisoning him from the inside out, rejoicing in the life they sucked from him to multiply. She could see his organs, his chakra dimming, dying, drowning in a sea of creatures so small, they were invisible to the naked eye. Cunning, foul beast, to use it's own pestilence to kill instead of actually fighting and bringing down it's prey directly... her own blood boiled in outright hatred at the thought of someone summoning that thing to try and kill her, not knowing that that was almost impossible. And in the end, they'd only managed to finish off the person who was most dear to her, now that Yukime was long dead. All this ran through her mind, behind the cool, professional medic's stare.

_I at least have to try, though, make it less painful, give him some time to say good bye... _she thought, calling up the crackly, light green trails that were her unique healing chakra to her left hand, the undamaged one. In the other, she made a fine chakra scalpel and slit the hospital gown down her cousin's chest, to his navel, folding the sides back to reveal the boy's torso and lean stomach, where she could just see the pulse of the carotid artery right beneath his ribcage. She needed skin-to-skin contact for this kind of healing, and taking the thing off was impossible, what with all the needles stuck in his arms. Rolling up her sleeve, the chakra making small, silvery noises and arching from finger to finger, she laid her hand upon the boy's chest, releasing the crackling energy from her palm. His eyes opened, rolling back down to focus on the cousin he liked best. "I tried to stay awake for you, but you took so long, where were you? You... don't normally take that long to heal yourself... I think... I think...the medics, they were all panicking, so it must be really bad... I..."

"Hush."

Her look told him everything he needed to know. "It... was blood poisoning, wasn't it? Is it? Why are you so quiet? She turned to him, eyes calm but dull with sorrow.

"I'm going to die, aren't I?"

A single tear slid down the side of her face, making a small wet spot on the white cloth of her robe. Then, she made a small choking sound, and a small dribble of blood escaped the side of her mouth, making another spot, this one red, on the white cloth. The young kage fell forward across her cousin, eyes wide in surprise, a small, heavy kunai buried hilt deep between her shoulder blades. Then, In a puff of snow, a log took her place, rolling onto the now wet floor. Outside, the kage jammed a handful of raw green sparks into her back, knowing it would keep her from losing too much blood before she could slay the intruder. Flickering back into the room she'd just left, her eyes blazed with a white, murderous passion as she spied the figure peering down through the open skylight. Right in my blind spot too, this bastard must at least have some brains... Wrenching the kunai from it's woody prison, she took precise aim, but even as she let the small dagger fly another kunai, this one with an exploding tag, buried itself in her right eye and exploded in a shower of blood and bone.

As the sharp fragments buried themselves into delicate ocular tissue, the kage turned with her one good eye to face the worthless piece of dung shinobi, recognizing him in a split second. "YOU, you piece of filth, sending that damn lizard to kill me and hiding in the bushes, you coward! How DARE you defile this village, you scum... just for that, you'll be receiving some special medical services from me, and believe me, this is going to hurt..." Gathering her chakra, she transformed it into the deadly white sparks she used to restart hearts, or in this case, stop them.

SSsPOW SSPOW SSSSSSPOW, three gigantic holes appeared in the infirmary roof, the third hole framing the rapidly disintegrating body of her attacker, who fluttered to the floor in flakes of gray char. The other medical ninjas who had previously exited the room stood stock still at the small view window. All of them knew that defibrillating bursts of that strength were supposed to be impossible, and seeing their leader produce three of them simultaneously... they all silently made a note to themselves to never, ever, EVER, get on their Koorikage's bad side. Then, their leader plummeted, falling full length on the hard tiles with a loud WHUMPH that stirred up a cloud of ashes from the incinerated ninja. then, the terrified medi-nins heard the girl utter a soft phrase:

"I'm sorry, I'm too late..."

As the last flakes of ash drifted to the tiles, another small voice said it's last words in reply:

"It's alright, Keshi, take my eye, it's the least I can do, since... you..."

The boy went limp. The girl stayed limp. One was dead. The other, unconscious. The clouds parted outside, tattered rays illuminating the two youths, and a slight breeze stirred the ash flakes into a swirling halo in the shafts of clear light. All was quiet, save for the ragged, slow breaths of the unconscious Koorikage, and the steady drip of blood from the marred, bloodied mess that had been the right side of her face. Something snapped, and the group of cowering medical ninja sprang into action, disregarding the slick of blood and ice water on the floor, for they had to save their leader, and honor her cousin's last requests, seeing as they had been the only ones to hear it.

The operation was a long one, as removing all the shrapnel from her was a painfully precise job. The actual transplant was the easy part. They only prayed that the ye would not be rejected by her body, after all the stress she had been through. The surgeon looked down at his handiwork, the neatly stitched incisions, and the grafted skin, a perfect match created from her own, and nearly dropped the needle he was holding, as a solitary minty-green sparkle arched in a path over the fresh stitches, sealing the skin together, and molding, with a hiss of liquefied flesh, a scar perfectly matching the one on her other cheek, where her left Byakugan eye traced lazily under the eyelid.

The Koorikage had come to long before the operation was over, but it didn't bother her, the pain, as the grafts were fused into her skin with a jolt of pain that would have normally made her hiss, and any other person scream. That pain didn't compare at all to the ache building in her chest. The pain in knowing that she'd been, in her eyes, responsible for the death of her cousin, and yet, she, the intended target would still open her eyes, walk the earth, live... and that even though she'd incinerated her cousin's murderer, her would-be murderer, the bastard had still managed to drag him down too. As she felt the eye slide neatly into her socket, she remembered his last words, his selflessness. She willed her heart to stop beating, to stop prolonging her misery, the slow and irreversible demise of every person who meant anything to her, but her treacherous heart kept it's steady rhythm, as she gave up on the idea of death. Opening her left eye, Byakugan inactive for once, she surveyed the blurry scene before her. The sunshine, spilling in, cold and arctic from the massive holes in the roof, the rust tinged puddle , tracked about the floor by many feet, the soggy mass of ash flakes below the largest hole, and the empty bed across from hers. The right side of her head still ached slightly, then tingled as she focused some sparks to the points where she was sorest. When that didn't help much, she lifted a lightly bandaged hand to explore the side of her face, finding it to be a mass of bandages and cotton, wound tightly around her cranium. Giving a little snort of exasperation, she began to undo the bandages, letting them fall to the floor. Her head feeling better already, she leaned over the side of the cot to gaze at her reflection in the pool of blood and water. Yes, her right eye was a dark gray, her left pure white. She sat back on her bed, and pulled the sheets over her, drifting into a light, natural sleep.

_When I find out who sent that idiot, I've got to gather up some of those ashes and give them back to that scum's leader in a matchbox... if I can find one..._

That, however, would be highly unlikely, since she'd incinerated all of the bastard's weapons, and the headband hadn't stood a chance.


	4. The Rinnegan Eye

**The Rinnegan Eye**

**By A Clockwork Pumelo**

***sings* I don't own any Naruto characters! They belong to Massahi Kishimoto!*Ahem* So yeah, this is how Keshi gets her third eye, you know, the one in the middle of her forehead that stays closed 99% of the time and is reserved for situations where major, major butt kicking power is needed. I haven't gotten to the part in the manga where Pein dies quite yet, but I think I have a pretty good idea of what happens based on massive amounts of spoilers. Correct me if I'm wrong about anything. Enjoy reading, and read and review please. It will encourage me to continue writing :-)**

My hair had long since come loose from its ties, the rain weighing it down like an ebony mourning veil. This land was always crying, I thought as I waded through the outskirts of Amegakure, bare feet stirring up clouds of silt in the ankle-deep water. I was going to pay my respects to an old... well, I couldn't call him a friend, nor would I call him an enemy. An acquaintance, yes, that was the word for this man. Someone I had come so close to, and yet had inevitably been bound to part from unharmed. Sometimes, in the middle of the night when I cannot sleep, I curse my near immortality. It was in the brief meeting with this... person? People? That I may have come as close as I ever will to breaking that immortality. So say the charts stating my apparent death and delivery to his Amegakure tower with a hole knocked into my skull. So also say the two round scars on my chest from the gentle insertion of chakra receiving rods, and the wide slit of the eyelid across my forehead that concealed the only bit of him I have left. He was, from the limited time I knew him, a man with many ideas, most of them generally despicable. But even if his methodology was flawed, it was for a good cause. Is peace not a good cause?

As I made my way into fire country, away from the endless rain and pain, feet caked with mud, I got to thinking about how we met, how we sparked, how we eventually clashed. How he was so interested in my vision of life and the preserving of it, and how paradoxically skilled I was in the taking of it. We were alike, he and I. We both just wanted peace. No more senseless killing, no more fields bathed in the blood of our brothers and sisters, and most of all, no more need for orphans of war to teach the world about pain. I wanted to teach the world how to grow away from pain. He wanted to teach the world how to grow within a maelstrom of pain. As my feet found the dry road, dropping clods of mud in my wake, it all came back to me.

So much for peaceful first contact. The body bag pressed in against my face, black and airless, yet still filled with the ferrous tang of my own blood. Good gods, I could swear I was drowning in it, as the stench and stickiness clung to my face and body, invading my eyes and nose and mouth with the cloying, metallic essence of my being. I was amazed to find that I could even think, seeing as the shinobi who had clubbed me into my bowl of ramen as soon as I deactivated my Byakugan had somehow managed to punch straight through my skull and into my brain, through one of the thickest spots no less. It was a wonder my head wasn't spread across a square meter of rain-soaked pavement. In any case, the wound was serious enough to warrant my body shutting down temporarily, first to sort out the damage, then to repair it and run a systems check. It would take at least three hours, seeing as I had lost nearly all the blood in my body, acquired a broken femur (somehow), and had a five centimeter hole in the middle of my damn forehead, with penetration or damage all the way back to the other side of my skull. In the mean time, I would just have to cope with being carried in a body bag, gods know where... I hoped they weren't about to bury me. That would mean an awful lot of trouble, digging myself out and all. Besides, I didn't much fancy the claustrophobia even in the bag, much less a couple meters of dirt. Skirting away from that thought, I focused on my heartbeat and breathing, or lack thereof. Suddenly, there was something solid under me, perhaps an operating table, and the bag was unzipped. I couldn't see, of course, but I could still hear.

"Hey, this is a pretty one." That sent chills of raw terror up my spine. I'd been referred to as a "pretty one" before, and the memories still made me want to hide and run and never return to those who had called me that. Worse, I would be completely helpless if they decided to...

"Yeah, but you sure it's a she? I can't hardly tell under all this blood." A pair of fingers pressed directly below my ribcage, feeling for a pulse in my carotid artery. "Well, I ain't gettin' no pulse, so it must be dead. Good muscles on this one though. Think the boss would like her?" The boss? Who was that? And why would he 'like me'? I tried to quell the rising panic and not break out of the healing coma prematurely. "Yeah, he'll like this body." The goon again. This is what you get for letting your guard down while you eat, a small portion of my un-scrambled brain told me, while the rest of it analyzed all available data. A door opened somewhere behind me, and the two goons shuffled out. The door closed with a snap, and I was left there like so much bloody meat to sit. I delved deeper into the trance that was part of the healing coma, and concentrated on speeding up the process as much as I could, though there was much to be done. I faded into my own body, repairing tissues and bone, losing track of my surroundings.

The shock of an alien chakra catapulted me into consciousness, a sleeper awaking from a grisly nightmare as the foreign power screeched against my own green lightning. My eyes flew open, flecks of dried blood still partially obscuring my vision, to find a man above me, his vividly orange hair standing out like trails of flame in my vision. He seemed to be concentrating on screwing some sort of metal rod into my chest, just under the last rib. That rod was the source of the foul chakra that seethed in my veins. I felt the jolt as my own power lurched into action within me, racing like green sparks up the rod, causing the man holding it to jump and send the rod flying across the room. It hit the far wall and clanged to the floor as he stared at me.

"Who are you, and who gave you permission to go poking me with chakra rods or whatever that is?" I wiped a crusting of blood from my eyelashes, observing the man more closely. Long, Fuuma orange hair, pasty white skin, black robes, and lots of piercings, possibly those rods. But what really got me were the eyes. The whirling, hypnotically rippling eyes. That was Rinnegan, I knew it. So the rumors of the Sannin's student were true, and I was laying right in front of him. To be fair, he looked pretty shocked too when he got a good look at my eyes. they usually have that effect on people, not so much the Byakugan, which I can activate and deactivate at will, but the Sharingan, which is always active but to varying degrees; I have managed something unique with this eye: I have forced it to develop five full tomoe, without ever activating the Manegekyou Sharingan. Right now, my right eye was spinning lazily at four tomoe as the Rinnegan user above me watched, transfixed.

"I might ask you the same question, the first one at least. Since you are answering to God, you shall tell me my answer first." God, hmm? There were whisperings of Amegakure's God; he controlled the rain and the people with equal ease, and had a dream of world peace. I had come here to seek help with my own vision of peace. So far it was turning out rather badly, but anything is salvageable, given enough time and care. Even a traumatized, pain-hardened heart.

I told him of my vision, of a world where there was peace, and shinobi no longer slaughtered each other wholesale to cloak the ground and the sky with red clouds. He seemed to listen for a while, then cut me off when I began to describe a world with no pain, at least not more than was necessary. He seemed agitated, and paced the room, silky orange hair flicking back and forth over his eyes like fiery curtains as his eyes revolved like whirlpools of molten energy. Finally he stopped and looked at me, eyes slowing to a lazy crawl. I was sitting up, green sparks crackling and skittering across my left leg and neck as I healed myself fully. I stopped when he walked towards me, getting close, way too close.

"I don't know what kind of pain you have been through, though judging by your calm healing of otherwise fatal wounds, pain is not a new experience for you. All I can say is that pain is what the world needs. Pain makes people grow up and mature; so does guilt, so does grief. Putting a bandage on the world's wound won't make it go away. The world has to develop scars, make itself tough, leave itself reminders of pain endured upon itself." His face was inches from mine, every detail sharp and vivid, burned into my memory by my Sharingan eye, right down to the ginger eyelashes and the barbell piercing that seemed to penetrate through the bridge of his nose. The ripples in his eyes whirled faster as he continued.

"The world has to hurt. It has to feel pain. Only when the world is reeling in agony can the people within it retreat into peace to lick their wounds like the animals they are. I am God. I will rock this mortal world to its very core with the pain I inflict upon it, and it will leave such a scar that the world will never be able to forget the pain. Over time, these scars will accumulate with each passing bout of torture, of pain. Over time, the world will come to know pain beyond imagining, and only then can it mature, ripen into something resembling peace." He got even closer, his nose only half an inch from mine, hair cascading into my lap and brushing my hands. As he spoke, tiny flecks of spittle landed on my skin, and I could feel his breath. It was cool, and smelled of spices and herbs, but underneath there was something faintly rank and decaying. "Do you understand me? Without hurt and pain, there can be no pleasure. Without war and turmoil, there can be no peace. Without hardship, there can be no opportunity for maturation and betterment. Without chaos there can be no order. Without hell, there can be no heaven or earth for us to walk. I will supply this world with all the hurt, pain, grieving, suffering, destruction, anything else it needs, and shape the broken pieces into my own creation where there can finally be peace!" The last word was almost a sob. Almost. He whipped around away from me, starting to pace the room again, eyes spinning like a pair of deranged Diablo in their sockets. I just sat there, thinking about what he had said. Pain... he must have had some bad experiences... not that I'm one to talk...

"I am sorry, but I must disagree with you on certain things. In my experience, pain only brings about bitterness and-" I never had a chance to finish explaining myself, because I had been brained for the second time today, my body pinned against a wall, a chakra transmitter rod penetrating through the almost sealed hole in my skull. The chakra burned as it was forced into my body, mixing with the crackling green static of my own power and making me writhe for a minute, maybe more, blind with pain. My body was on fire, being frozen, electrocuted, crushed, ground, stung and scalded all at once. My mind, taking the brunt of the invasion, went careening through a blizzard of horrifying images: A man, back snapped and bent backwards, head lolling between his ankles. The floor of an ANBU interrogation room so close I could see the clots of old blood mixing with the fresh that spurted onto the floor from my veins. My hands, sprinkling powdery snow into a grave that was far too small. A porcelain mask shining in the first rays of dawn, a stream of blood dripping down my arm, onto my leather glove, and through the eye hole of the mask. My youngest cousin, intravenous tubes circling him like a macabre halo as the heart monitor reading flatlined. Yukime, hands, arms, and face as white as his eyes, frozen and cold and dead. Fetid breath on my neck muttering obscenities as my head was jerked back by my braid and the blunt teeth bit down on my shoulder, drawing blood and tears of pain as the bear-like chest crushed my abused body against the hardwood desk. Blood vessels burst in my eyes as my vocal cords tore and my body contorted, held only by the stake pinning me through the head to the wall as I screamed, the scream of a dying animal. But I could not die, that I knew. The chakra receded after an eternity and I slumped for a moment, unconscious, a blood soaked ragdoll before my own chakra welled up within me, chasing after the fire that had invaded my body. The crackling green mass engulfed him, burning to lime, then white as it utterly consumed the cause of my pain. I pulled the chakra receiver out of my head, sinking to my knees, splashing in more of my own blood. For a moment, I stared through the red haze of blood at what was left of the "God". there wasn't much, save for a charred metal plate from his headband. I gathered my hands together, formed the sign for Oscillatory Flicker, and spent the last of my chakra in a blast of blood droplets that splattered against the far wall as I was gone.

I don't know exactly how I wound up home at the onsen just outside my village, but I did. When I finally got home, nobody asked about my forehead. I doubt they noticed it, scarred and marred as I am. I recently got word of the death of this man, and I think it is time to pay my last respects. It is here that I find myself in a remote mountain top in the land of fire, grieving with the leaf ninja and staying after to pay my personal respects. I never knew the real Pein. I never knew his name was Nagato. I never knew he was the person behind the God of Amegakure. Seeing him now, blood red hair falling into dead, sunken eyes I think I understand something of his want for the world to know pain, only to grow from it. He gave his life to uphold what he thought was right, even though many did not agree. As I stand quietly, his angel comes to fetch him. Her blue hair hides the blue tears she is crying as she unfastens him from the bulky prison he called home. As she frees hi left hand, a tiny piece of paper rolls out. I pick it up, and read it.

"I thought you might be here on my death. Your vision

is one that, if mine fails, may hold even more hope for

the world than the nine tails'. I'm sorry about that hole

in your head. I hope you can find something to fill it."

-Nagato

The blue haired angel turns to me as she unfastens his other arm, nodding in silent permission. It is quick, as the eye I took from his other body was dead and unsalvageable. I pop it out, and then replace it with Nagato's left Rinnegan eye. The transplant fits perfectly into the slit in my forehead and after a brief battle with my chakra, surrenders and becomes mine. I silently thank Nagato for being so kind as to spear me through the head just so, allowing a split bundle of optic nerve to replicate and connect this new, third eye into my nervous system. From the first glimpse of my twin doujutsu, he must have known of my quest for all three, and planned accordingly. The blue haired angel turned back a final time to look at me.

"Take care, and use it well." It seems that pain can serve a purpose after all.


End file.
